A relatively overcast sky kept us from good polar alignment and squashed any hopes of deep sky observing, but Jackie and Jim and I found ourselves on the hill at Binbrook, still hopeful of some lunar and planetary viewing.
Saturn and Mars were in conjunction and at only 3/4 of a degree apart would fit into the same field of view in a telescope. Unfortunately the same clouds that had made for a beautiful sunset also obscured this planetary duo. Since we couldn’t see them both Jim and I used our GoTo scopes to point them at the planets (see, who says I never use my GoTo?). During a very brief thinning of the clouds (no, not clearing…only thinning!) there was Saturn and Mars in the eyepiece. Jim just fit them into the field of view of his trusty 8″ schmidt-cassegrain and after enjoying that view ran over to my small but mighty 80mm refractor and sure enough, there they were. I pulled out the eyepiece to change to a slightly wider field of view but in the time that took the clouds thickened and the planetary pairing was not seen again. Never the less, the magic of the hill pulled through for us and we all had successful sightings.
The moon had been beautiful in the daytime sky but the time night fell it barely showed through the clouds but was robbed of and contrast or detail.
I tried a few shots through my 80mm and was happy with the result. I shot both straight through the scope (prime focus) and afocally, with lens on camera and eyepiece in scope. Here is one of those shots done with a 10mm eyepiece in the ED80:
Jims scope also provided lovely close up views of some wonderful terminator detail. Our closest celestial neighbour never fails to satisfy, even through the clouds!
As the night wore on the clouds thinned and Jupiter appeared low in the south. Views through both scopes were wonderful. Jim’s 8″ provided a bright and colourful view complete with 3 moons, and my 80mm was showing lovely detail in the bands, thanks to a filter that Jim gave to me. Although I had been happy with the views before, a combination of a contrast boosting filter and a blue filter made for a strange colour (kind of blue-green) but sharply detailed view. Wow, what an improvement! I had written down the time of Ganymede’s reappearance from behind Jupiter and its shadow but left the paper at home. Since Jupiter was the only thing showing well in the sky we were happy to watch and wait. Just before midnight Ganymede started to emerge from the shadow and grow in brightness. It was a beautiful sight and great fun to watch it move out of shadow and in to sun. Perhaps most remarkable of all was Jackie’s sighting of Ganymede before it emerged from shadow! Without any prior knowledge, Jackie correctly noted the exact location of Ganymede’s reappearance before it appeared! To finish off the evening I even tried to take an afocal image of Jupiter. It shows absolutely nothing noteworthy, but here it is anyways.
Our perseverance and unwillingness to be deterred by clouds paid off and the three of us had a wonderful time, and all HAA members do when out together. See you in Burlington on Saturday!
